The Church of Perpetual Experimentation

A sprawling new church in the southern Roman suburb of EUR, set within the fictitious context of a new pontificate that is devoted to the massive restructuring and expansion of the church, its liturgies and its architecture. The site in EUR is set aside by the new pope as a field of experimentation, where the doctrinal and liturgical innovations being developed over the Tiber in the Vatican are immediately put to test and trial with the practising -- and non-practising -- public. All development in the work is structured around the theme of Assemblage, so that all scales, from structural unit, through to the composition of those units into spaces, and then the arrangement of those spaces themselves, are governed by a logic of assemblage, aggregation, and eventually in time (the project evolves over many postulated years) recombination. The eventual recombination being made possible by each type of space being constructed out of discrete units which themselves are durable and easy to re-use. The film is directly below, and the book, followed by a short animation of a multi-nave, and some images.

The project was awarded AA Honours in 2008.

A piece of the church (spectacular staircase) was made (in foam, and then hand painted) as the altar on which the unit's work was shown in the end of year exhibition:

The project in the honours exhibition (thats my mum sitting on the chair)